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January 10, 2015

Intel’s Diversity Goals Explained!

Intel’s Diversity Goals Explained!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-10-2015 at 9:00 pm
Categories: Foundries, Intel Foundry

One of the more interesting announcements by Intel at CES was surprisingly not about technology, it was about a $300M Investing in Diversity and Inclusion initiative. According to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich “A fully diverse and inclusive workplace is fundamental to our ability to innovate and deliver business results.” After being overwhelmed with technology last week this was a welcome diversion so I did a little more digging into this somewhat controversial topic.

California is truly a melting pot of cultural diversity but when I started working in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s it was very white. The company I worked for (Data General) was based in Massachusetts but had a fab in Sunnyvale. In fact, DG was founded the same year as Intel. In my experience it really wasn’t until the emergence of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem that diversity came to Silicon Valley. Semiconductor design was no longer controlled by the big IDMs so anybody from any part of the world could start a fabless semiconductor company and they did. The fabless semiconductor ecosystem brought even more diversity with hundreds if not thousands of start-up companies coming and going (EDA software, semiconductor IP, design services, etcetera). And with that came incredible strength because Brian Krzanich is right, continued semiconductor innovation requires diversity, absolutely.

Given that evolution, the question I have is: Why does Intel have to invest $300M in diversification and inclusion? The answer is in the 2013 Intel Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Report (the EEOC enforces Federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination). According to Intel 57,000 out of 100,000+ employees are based in the U.S. with this illustrated diversity:

Intel management is even less diverse: White men and women hold 156 of 187 (84%) of the executive and senior management positions. Certainly most people in Silicon Valley know this and it is not an “Intel only” problem. I’m guessing it is a somewhat common problem with U.S. companies founded in the 1960s. I do however greatly appreciate that Brian Krzanich publicly acknowledged this challenge, especially in a worldwide forum such as CES.

You can see the Intel Global Diversity and Inclusion landing page HERE. Intel even has a Chief Diversity Officer (Rosalind Hundell) who is a 19 year Intel employee. According to her bio Rosalind was appointed Director of Diversity in 2004 and is now also Vice President of Human Resources:

“What an exciting time for our industry and our company. Candid discussions about the state of diversity build the foundation for real change in the technology sector. Recent media attention has given us a moment to pause and reflect on Intel’s own diversity journey.”

Considering that she has been at this since 2004 I’m wondering what the Intel diversity ratio was back when she started versus what it is today. I could not find the 2004 Intel Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Report. If someone else can, please post it in the comments section and I will include it. Or maybe someone from Intel can help with this? Transparency is your friend. I also sent Rosalind a LinkedIn invitation so let’s see where that goes.

January 10, 2015

Wanna Buy a Used Stepper? Only One Owner, Mint Condition…

Wanna Buy a Used Stepper? Only One Owner, Mint Condition…
by Paul McLellan on 01-10-2015 at 12:20 pm
Categories: ESD Alliance, Semiconductor Services

Back in the early 90s there used to be a billboard alongside 237 advertising second-hand fab equipment: steppers, ion implanters, diffusion ovens. It used to amuse me as an “only in silicon valley” thing; after all, even in silicon valley the number of individuals who were likely to be in a position to buy used fab equipment was pretty small and billboards are usually a form of mass advertising.

But there really is a secondary market for fab equipment. Today it is approximately $1.5B, representing about 5% of the total $31B fab equipment market. It is likely to become more important going forward. Of course 14nm and 10nm equipment gets all the publicity but the reality is that legacy fabs are becoming increasingly important. For example, TSMC has recently produced new lower-power variants of several of their older processes, presumably with a view to increasing loading in some of their older fabs. GlobalFoundries upgraded on of its legacy fabs from 200mm to 300mm. The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to provide further volume for legacy processes.

Investment in “legacy” fabs are important in manufacturing many semiconductor products and such fabs remain a sizeable portion of the industries manufacturing base:

150 mm and 200 mm fab capacity represent ~40% of the total installed fab capacity
Over 400 150 mm and 200 mm fabs are in production today, and only 10–20 are expected to close by 2018
200 mm fab capacity has been on the increase, led by foundry companies who are increasing capacity by approximately 7% by 2016
For 2014, foundries and IDMs increased spending for secondary 200mm equipment by 45% (foundries being roughly half of the spend)

SEMI have just produced a report on this subject, the SEMI Secondary Fab Equipment Report. They completed a study of the market to determine the market size and identify key trends and issues impacting this important industry segment. Foundries and IDMs were asked to provide information pertaining to their acquisition of used tools for 150mm, 200mm and 300mm. Direct spending input was obtained from 28 IDMs and foundries and estimates made for another 12 based on capex plans, quarterly reports and so on. The focus of the report is fab equipment (used assembly, test and packaging equipment was not included in the study).

This report is new, unique coverage for the industry. The report contains 26 pages and 29 figures and charts. The target audience is expected to be companies serving the secondary fab equipment supply chain, IDMs and foundries, and other industry analysts who need data to benchmark and analyze this market.

You can order the report (or download a sample) here.

Curie to Bring New Dimensions in Wearables!

Curie to Bring New Dimensions in Wearables!
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-10-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: EDA, Events, Foundries, Intel Foundry, Mobile

In the past year, seeing the kinds of wearables doing what Smartphones can do, I wasn’t much excited about wearables; however after looking at what Intelhas demonstrated in CES 2015, a button sized SoC called Curie, I get to believe that it will be a game changer in wearables and would let Intel do what it couldn’t do with Smartphone chips even after spending billions of dollars to gain that market. This intelligent button can unleash many newer possibilities which we haven’t seen in wearables so far, I will talk about it a little later, let’s first look at what it is.

That’s the Curie, Brian Krzanich; CEO of Intel is showing holding it between his three fingers at CES. Wow! That’s a perfect size suitable for the IoT world where it can invisibly rule that world. It’s powered by Quark SE CPU, 80 kB SRAM, 384 kB flash memory, BTLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) radio, integrated battery charging PMIC and an integrated 6-axis combo sensor with an accelerometer and gyroscope that supports gesture recognition. Wow! with all that on a cute circular PCB, it’s the smallest! It has open source RTOS. Curie is said to be a platform that can be versatile for wearable makers to slip it into anything – ring, watch, fitness gizmos, eyewear, jewellery, apparel and virtually anything which can be easily put on your body. With low power and rechargeable battery, that’s ideal for wearable. It’s just out of Intel labs, to be available in the market by 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] half of this year, but was ready for Krzanich to play with it and show some gimmicks during his keynote in CES. It’s said to be coming with Intel IQ software kits that contain host of applications including apps, device drivers, algorithms, connectivity, biometrics, and cloud integration and so on.

Now let’s imagine how it can cling into many things for different purposes in our society. It reminds me about James Bond movies 😎 where he uses tiny tracking devices, micro eyes, spying devices…. Are we going to see real Bonds everywhere in today’s society, spying and securing the society? In developing countries, catching corruption in time and building healthy societies can be initiated. Interestingly, the devices built with Curie can bring up many possibilities for women safety and security as it can slip into jewellery, bracelet, pendant, and so on and can provide real-time help in case of any distress signs. Can such devices be stolen? Thieves beware!

Only concern to have is it really provides the needed performance and battery life, shouldn’t disappoint like Galileo. The brighter side is that Intel has partnered with several brand names in wearables – eyewear makers Luxotticaand Oakley; watch maker Fossil; designer wear company OpeningCeremony; acquired intelligent fitness device maker BASIS. In the fall of last year, Intel and OpeningCeremony unveiled MICA Bracelet; MICA is an abbreviation for My Intelligent Common Accessory.

It appears that Intel is head-on to win the game in wireless business through wearable market. That’s a great move! It prompts me to frame a phrase here – A leader should stop chasing, rather it should change the route.

Mentor Moves to Enter IoT Fray

Mentor Moves to Enter IoT Fray
by Tom Simon on 01-09-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: EDA, IoT, Siemens EDA

In December I signed up for an IoT “lunch and learn” hosted by Mentor Graphics. There were a number of surprising things about the session. The first and most obvious is that it was really a “breakfast-to-lunch and learn”. Starting at 9AM and going through the end of lunch, it was packed full of ‘learning.’ It was also packed full of attendees. Clearly people were interested to hear what Mentor was presenting on the topic of IoT. This is interesting because many people see Mentor as just an EDA company. But as the first presenter, Product Line Manager Andrew Caples, pointed out, Mentor has been involved in embedded software since 1986. And of course as an EDA company, they necessarily have vast experience with software.

Caples offered up some interesting concepts. Looking at total units produced, he divided up previous and current generations of computing. Mainframes had up to one million units produced; mini computers reached the 10 million mark. The number of units for Mobile is in the billions, and we can expect IoT to reach 10’s of billions. No matter how you define it, the internet of things covers a lot of use cases. On one end you have OpenADR, created by utility companies to manage and match electrical generation and demand on the power grid. On the other you have the quantified self (i.e. Fitbit) and things like knee joint monitoring devices.

According to Caples, 4 things are essential for the internet of things: connectivity, security, reliability and power management. In his talk he discussed each of these areas and how they can be addressed. The internet of things changes our previous computing models by adding a large number of external computing elements. External nodes are hard to update and have more difficult code traceability. The end nodes are more easily hacked. Caples’ assertion is that right now convenience is winning out over security.Bluetooth Smart often uses broadcast or “just works” pairing for the easiest connections. He pointed to Bluetooth Smart as having a weak 6 digit pin for key exchange. For Bluetooth Smart, Out Of Band (OOB) pairing is what should be used for the most secure connection, but it has the most complicated use model.

The way to secure end nodes starts at the lowest level of code. Then each level of code above that needs to be verified before runtime. This is called Root of Trust. Mentor’s widely used RTOS, Nucleus, supports Root of Trust with keys to create a hash to verify code prior to boot. Caples cited the example of Freescale’s i.MX processors that use a feature called High Assurance Boot (HAB) to verify boot code before it is executed.

ARM uses what it calls Trust Zone to ensure that only trusted code can access certain parts of the processor IP. This can help keep malicious code from accessing crypto blocks, certain devices and secure keys. One participant pointed out that Trust zone is all or nothing. So that means that a banking app that might need to use a crypto block would have full run of everything in the Trust Zone.

Caples also spoke about power management. No matter how many power optimization capabilities there are in the hardware, unless the software is built to use them there will be wasted power. Caples said that Nucleus has a rich set of features for managing hardware states to manage power. Developers can define system states for different operational modes. I was reminded of my Fitbit: it uses a low power mode to track my motion and then needs more system resources to sync to my smartphone. Operating points are used to control processor speed. Nucleus allows developers to set system states and operating points with a single API call.

The second talk was by Felix Baum, who oversees Mentor’s virtualization, Multi-OS and Multi-Core technologies. He dove deeper into the security aspects of the internet of things.

A growing technique for securing IoT and mobile platforms is partitioning tasks across processors. This way a secure wall can be built between critical functions and potentially malicious application code. Taking this a step further Mentor suggests using their Hypervisor to support virtual machines. Now a mix of operating systems can be used, and strong firewalls will exist between critical functions of the system and potentially vulnerable application code. This also works well for putting code that needs RTOS support on one machine and putting higher level OSs like Linux on another.

Baum outlined several scenarios where there is a mix of either homogeneous or heterogeneous cores. With current embedded CPUs it is feasible to run an RTOS in a virtual machine, or even in a bare metal environment (BME). Perhaps one processor is used solely to decrypt video and has specialized capabilities for this task. Another example is an elevator that does not need to use any resources until a BME core detects an occupant, at which time a Linux processor can be booted to interact with the user. In medical applications, tasks can be divided up for local and remote operations. Perhaps a medical device has a console at the bedside, but also occasionally needs to transmit data to a server for archival or subsequent analysis. These tasks can be coded for separate processors using the optimal OS and coding environment. Mentor’s Multicore Framework can facilitate this kind of development.

Data in the internet of things is vulnerable in several places. The most obvious is during transmission, but shared memory and IPC traffic are at risk, as well as data at rest. How many of us wipe our old phones before letting them out of our hands? Or do you prefer to smash them with a hammer? You have to think of the whole product lifecycle if you want to be comprehensive about security. Baum’s well taken point is that encryption does not equal security.

Mobile and embedded processors have evolved tremendously. The idea of multiple VMs running on multiple core CPUs in mobile devices would have seemed far-fetched a decade or two ago. ARM has even added type 2 virtualization to its A15 so that the Hypervisor itself can run as an application (guest) on a native OS. This means that even bare metal code or the guest operating systems are well contained within the underlying OS protections.

Mentor has a solid offering and lots of experience in the embedded space. It looks like Mentor has big plans for the internet of things and cloud computing. I’ll discuss the third presentation in another blog. The one teaser I can leave here is that it seems EDA companies are venturing far afield in looking for new business models. Look no further than Synsopsys’ acquisition of Coverity to get a sense of this.

January 8, 2015

Makers get access to Intel RealSense

Makers get access to Intel RealSense
by Don Dingee on 01-08-2015 at 11:00 pm
Categories: Events, Intel Foundry

One of the great devices in maker lore is the Polaroid 6500 Series Sonar Ranging Module. It was originally part of the autofocus system for their SX-70 cameras circa 1978, long before through-the-lens optical autofocus sensors were perfected. Back then, people couldn’t focus. Dr. Land thought he was teaching people to compose images, not just point and shoot. Earlier models of the SX-70 with a focusing view screen enhanced by a rangefinder prism were producing too many fuzzy pictures. The ranging module bounced ultrasound off the primary subject and focused accordingly, even in low visible light.

Polaroid wanted to reduce costs and stimulate applications for the technology. In kit form with an ultrasonic transducer and a small logic board, the 6500 Series measured distances from 6 inches to 35 feet. This gave makers working on toys, robots, and other ideas an easy way to remotely measure distance from the perspective of the host.

Here it is 2015, and guess what? People still can’t focus, even though there are more pictures being shot on smartphones and tablets than ever. There is nothing worse than taking a picture of a critical, once-in-a-lifetime moment and finding out the shot is out of focus. More accurately, the subject of interest is out of focus in the scene – the camera usually decides to focus on something, sometimes not what you wanted. Photoshop can work some miracles with unsharp masks and Smart Sharpen, but too little detail or too much shake and the image is toast. Image stabilization and other computational photography techniques help a lot.

Intel showed off quite a few buzzworthy demos at CES 2015. One was bringing RealSense back for a longer look, with more details after a slight tease at last year’s event and several Jim Parsons commercials over the recent holidays. There are two keys to RealSense technology: the 3D imaging subsystem, and the algorithms behind them.

There are erroneous reports it is a 3D camera (and Intel even calls it that for simplicity, hoping nobody would notice). Smartphone enthusiasts may recall that craptastic fad from just a couple years ago, stereoscopic optical images from dual lenses. Amazon also got the 3D label with the dynamic perspective sensor system on the Amazon Fire Phone, which uses four front-facing cameras plus infrared LEDs to sense how a user is holding and looking at the device and adjust the display.

Intel RealSense goes much farther than either. It uses three physical pieces to capture images: a normal optical imager, an infrared laser projector, and an infrared imager. RealSense actually scans the entire scene up to 30 meters away in infrared, measuring distances from the optical sensor to each pixel, and with some computation the real-world dimensions between pixels in the scene. A closer comparison is Microsoft Kinect, which uses the same basic tactic of infrared scanning and 3D reconstruction, but only up to 4m.

Distance does wonderful things. It allows computational refocusing of an image, since the depth is known across the scene. It also allows gesture recognition, even emotional analytics, in a far more advanced way than just a 2D digitized set of pixels can convey. It also powers drones to recognize and avoid objects, again not just a blob of pixels in a scene but a known object with position, vector, and velocity.

RealSense also allows real-time extraction of objects from a scene. For instance, I could replace the background for a video chat shot in my office with something more interesting, like seats on the 3B line at Angel Stadium of Anaheim.

Just as Amazon and Microsoft have done, Intel has an SDK for developing RealSense applications. It is broken into three parts: a front camera suite for gestures and interaction, a computational photography suite for photo processing, and a coming-soon rear camera suite for augmented reality and other ideas. They support Windows 8.1, and claim to need a 4th Generation Intel Core Processor to have enough horsepower for running the SDK effectively. They are also offering a standalone RealSense camera kit, manufactured by Creative.

We’ve come a long way since the chirpy Polaroid kit. We’ll see if RealSense catches on, gaining support in smartphones and tablets. In the meantime – makers, away.

January 8, 2015September 1, 2024

Tizen to connect Samsung’s world – Can it set new equations?

Tizen to connect Samsung’s world – Can it set new equations?
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-08-2015 at 7:30 am
Categories: Events, Foundries, IoT, Samsung Foundry

The USA has very good culture of demonstrating new innovations in every industry by way of conferences, exhibitions, workshops, large meetings and so on. The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) is one of its kinds which exhibit new electronic products that tell about which way the industry is heading. Electronic products are final outcome of semiconductor industry and hence CES clearly tells about the strategic directions of semiconductor industry. After bloggingabout my observations of last year and foreseeing 2015 to be pivotal for new emergence of semiconductor landscape, I was remotely reading about the developments in CES 2015. And as expected, I could see IoT related and connected devices in consumer space in the limelight.

The South Korean tiger, Samsungis betting big on its Tizen O/S to make all of its devices internet ready starting with smart homes and smart automotives. They unveiled smart TV powered by Tizen software which will run on all web-connected models in 2015. They demonstrated curved UHD (higher definition than 4K) TVs which will be powered by content from 20[SUP]th[/SUP] Century Fox. The TV is added with a nanocrystal semiconductor layer for brighter screen and better color appearance. With TV package of channels being delivered over internet, any video or movie while being viewed on a Smartphone can be easily switched TV and vice versa. Samsung debuted Milk VR, a virtual-reality video app, exclusively for its device Gear VR. It will expand Milk Music and Milk Video to its smart TVs.

Chef Collection app was another charmer that provides recipes and tips from expert chefs and will be available from Google Play. Home and Kitchen appliances have been upgraded. The Korean chaebol says all of its products will be internet ready within five years from now.

Samsung is working with BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG) to install Samsung tablets as touch command screens in cars. They demoed on how a wristwatch can be used to communicate with a car.

I just watched an interesting video on CNETwhere Samsung CEO, Yoon Boo Keun outlined his vision about IoT. Samsung having presence in most of the consumer electronic devices, home appliances and entertainment systems can rule the world after connecting all of them through internet and web. As I perceive the electronic world going forward, IoT can be a boon to some conglomerates (like Samsung) provided they can connect their systems well to perfection and the software works well. At the same time, unconnected systems can push organizations to failure. Of course standardizations are needed to connect systems from different sources; Samsung has a clear competitive advantage as it has its own devices in many segments. It’s yet to demonstrate Tizen working on its Smartphones though.

About Samsung, I had mentioned about their collaboration with Intel for Tizen development, joining Thread Group, signing up with Cisco, acquiring SmartThings, its Innovation Museum and so on in one of my blog last month – What Will Drive Smartphone Market Now? Samsung seems to be on the right strategy to pull through its Smartphone market along with IoT strategy. Will it?

Ion Implant – Its Not Just for Doping Anymore

Ion Implant – Its Not Just for Doping Anymore
by Scotten Jones on 01-07-2015 at 8:30 pm
Categories: Foundries

At the heart of fabricating integrated circuits is the ability to selectively change the electrical properties of the semiconductor substrate. This key to fabrication is accomplished by doping – introducing atoms locally into the semiconductor substrate.

In the early days of the semiconductor industry doping was accomplished by creating a pattern on the surface of the semiconductor substrate typically in an oxide film and then depositing a doped glass over the surface. A subsequent heat treatment would then diffuse the dopants from the glass into the exposed semiconductor surface in some areas and the dopants would be blocked by the glass in other areas.

With the introduction of ion implantation for doping, solid source doping has largely disappeared (although Intel recently brought it back for one application in their 14nm process). Ion implantation utilizes a particle accelerator to inject dopants into the semiconductor material with high energies. Ion implant has several advantages over solid source doping, first and foremost is better control of the amount of dopant introduced. Ion implant can also better control the depth of the dopants and utilize photoresist as the mask for doping as opposed to requiring a film that can withstand high temperature; and Ion implantation can introduce nearly any atom of interest and does it at low temperature.

Recently the semiconductor industry has begun the evolution of logic processes from planar devices to fully depleted devices such as FinFETs and FDSOI. This transition greatly improves the electrostatic control of the gate over the channel of the device and dramatically reduces leakage. This transition also reduces the need for ion implantation. As semiconductor devices have shrunk into the deep sub-micron range the control of threshold voltages has driven a significant increase in the need for ion implantation. Different threshold voltages have required threshold adjust implants for NMOS and PMOS for each threshold voltage. At deep sub-micron dimensions the halo implant at the drain extension step and even the source/drain contact implants also have to be tailored for each threshold voltage. An additional threshold voltage can require as many as 13 implants at 40nm and smaller nodes! With FinFETs threshold adjust implants are still used but there are no halo implants so only extensions implants for NMOS and PMOS are required and raised source/drains are used with no implants. FDSOI further reduces the implants required by controlling threshold voltages with biasing instead of implants. At first glance this all seems like bad news for implant companies.

At SEMICON West in 2014 I attended an Axcelis presentation on the use of implants to change the material properties of wafers. Current state-of-the-art implanters can vary the dose implanted into a wafer radially. So if for example you had a CMP process that removed material faster at the edge of a wafer versus the middle of the wafer you could implant a higher dose of an implant specie in the center of the wafer than the wafer edge increasing the CMP removal rate in the center and creating a CMP/Implant process combination that is uniform across the wafer. This new application for ion implant was presented as having the potential to maintain or grow the market for implanters even though doping applications were declining. Some applications for this technique:

1. Amorphization
2. Modifying CMP removal rates
3. Modifying Etch rates
4. Hardening photoresist
5. Reducing photoresist pattern line-edge-roughness (LER)

At the time I thought this was an interesting potential application but I wasn’t aware of it actually seeing much use. I will comment that I could see a lot of potential for it, implant steps are relatively inexpensive particularly if no photoresist mask is required at only $1 to $2 per implant for a 300mm wafer.

Since then I have become aware that this technique is rapidly being adopted with some logic processes using materials modifications implants 10 or more times per wafer. On the memory side the usage is lower, more in the 2 to 5 implants per wafer but it is growing as well. As process linewidths continue to shrink this is a technique that will likely see increased adoption. In most cases the specie being implanted is similar to the material it is being implanted into so these implants don’t show up on reverse engineering analysis of parts but they are being used today!

January 7, 2015

Tizen, Is It a Thing?

Tizen, Is It a Thing?
by Paul McLellan on 01-07-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: Events, Mobile

I’m not at CES so I’m reporting second hand. But Samsung made some announcements and, since they didn’t make any mobile announcements, people were disappointed. Like Don Dingee, I think that any major mobile announcements will be done in March at Mobile World Congress. Although CES is starting to get a little bit more of a mobile focus, MWC has a laser focus on mobile and everyone involved in the industry will be in Barcelona.

Tizen is an operating system based on Linux largely developed by Samsung. There is actually an open source consortium (which also involves Intel) but it is perceived as the “Samsung Operating System.” The first product using the operating system was a camera over a year ago. At CES Samsung announced that going forward all their smart TVs were going to be running Tizen. That is a big step, the first time they have made a solid commitment to it.

But the big question everyone wants to know the answer to is whether Samsung will switch a lot of their smartphone product line to Tizen. The reason that this is so important is that Samsung is far and away the #1 smartphone supplier (roughly twice as big as Apple but not as profitable per phone). So if they switched a lot (or even all) their phones from Android (which they use today) to Tizen then it would have a big effect not just on Samsung but on the Android ecosystem too. Samsung is the only company with enough market power to create a third ecosystem (along with Android and iOS). Microsoft hopes to do it with WindowsPhone and their Nokia acquisition but with 3% market share they just don’t have the clout to make headway. If you are paying developers to write apps for your platform you are losing (what does Intel call it, contra revenue).

There are lots of rumors (and no facts) that Samsung was very unhappy that Google both supplied their operating system and competed against them (not very successfully, it has to be admitted) in the hardware business. The big worry was that if things continued then Google might have to give its Motorola subsidiary a better/earlier version of Android than it let Samsung have to try and make that business more successful. So in some sense Tizen might be regarded as an insurance policy.

One version of the story is that Samsung told Google that they would go full steam ahead in mobile with Tizen if Google didn’t sell off its hardware business. But they would back off if they did. They might regret than now that the purchaser turned out to be Lenovo, who have a track record of taking marginal or failing businesses and making them wildly successful. They took over IBM’s notebook business, which was losing money for IBM, and built it up. Recently they acquired IBM’s low-end server business too. Combined with Motorola they are a solid #3 in mobile behind Samsung and Apple, well ahead of Lenovo alone, who already had their own mobile business.

Evidence for this version of events is that Tizen for mobile suddenly slipped a couple of quarters when Google announced the sale of Motorola Mobility. But if Tizen is going to be in every smart TV then the operating system is not going to wither away. The carriers have always wanted a 3rd ecosystem so they can play everyone off against each other, which may or may not be significant. Apparently next month Sammy will release their first Tizen smartphone, but only in India. Whether this is dipping a toe in the water in an “off-Broadway” market remains to be seen.

2015 could be the year of Tizen. Or not. But keep an eye on it.

Cycling, Semiconductors and CES 2015

Cycling, Semiconductors and CES 2015
by Daniel Payne on 01-06-2015 at 10:00 pm
Categories: Events

I’m an avid cyclist that rode some 6,744.3 miles in 2014, according to www.strava.com, a free web site and popular app for road bikers like me. At CES this week I’ve read about many creative devices and apps to make your cycling experience better, so here’s my take on all of it.

Continue reading “Cycling, Semiconductors and CES 2015”

January 6, 2015

Lights, audio, and waiting for action from Qualcomm

Lights, audio, and waiting for action from Qualcomm
by Don Dingee on 01-06-2015 at 3:30 pm
Categories: Events, IoT

The news Qualcomm has shipped over a billion Snapdragon chips in Android smartphones broke last September. After reiterating that and a sustained outlook for smartphones over the next five years, the Qualcomm CES 2015 presser seemed to leave most media outlets a bit disappointed. Naturally, that prompts us to ask what is going on in the bigger Qualcomm picture. Continue reading “Lights, audio, and waiting for action from Qualcomm”